Our speaker for the first meeting will be Dr. George Moridis from Texas A&M University. The title of his presentation is : Some Recent Studies on Flow and Transport Processes in Porous and Fractured Media: Unconventional Resources and Exotic Subjects. Pizza lunch will be at 11:30 and the presentation will begin shortly after. One suggested parking is at Stadium Parking Garage - Lot #386, 2175 Gayley Road, Berkeley CA 94720.
Please RSVP by Tuesday October 2, 2018 to Dr. Souheil Ezzedine: ezzedine1@llnl.gov
Abstract
The seminar covers studies related to present and recent projects on hydrocarbon recovery conducted by the team of G. J. Moridis at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and at the Petroleum Engineering Dept. of Texas A&M University. These investigations focus mainly on unconventional resources and cover the spectrum from fundamental to field-scale studies. The presentation includes discussions (a) on the numerical simulation codes developed by G. Moridis and his team for the solution of complex problems of transport through porous media, accounting for coupled flow, thermal, thermodynamic, geomechanical, chemical and geophysical processes, (b) on the analysis of production from shale gas and shale oil reservoirs, including high-definition numerical studies of the associated coupled flow, thermal and geomechanical system behavior, as well as fundamental laboratory studies exploring the mechanisms of flow in ultra-tight media at nano-scales, (c) on the numerical study of hydraulic fracturing and of its potential environmental impact on shallower groundwater resources, (d) on gas production from a variety of gas hydrate resources, and (e) on proppant transport and emplacement during hydraulic fracturing.
George Moridis is a Professor of Petroleum Engineering and holder of the George and Joan Voneiff Professorship in Unconventional Resources at Texas A&M University. Moridis holds the ExxonMobil Visiting Professor Chair in the Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering Dept. of the National University of Singapore, in addition to being a visiting Senior Scientist in the Energy Geosciences Division of LBNL and a visiting professor in the Guangzhou Center for Gas Hydrate Research of the Chinese Academy of Sciences; he is also an adjunct professor in the Chemical Engineering Dept. at the Colorado School of Mines, and in the Petroleum and Natural Gas Engineering Dept. of the Middle East Technical University, Ankara, Turkey. Moridis is the author or coauthor of over 95 papers in peer-reviewed journals, 3 book chapters, 3 patents and more than 210 LBNL reports, conference paper and book articles. As of August 2018, he has more than 10,500 citations. He was a Distinguished Lecturer of the Society of Petroleum Engineers (SPE) for 2009– 10, and has been a SPE Distinguished Member since 2010. He is a member of the U.S. Secretary of Energy’s Methane Hydrate Advisory Committee, and the recipient of a 2011 Secretarial Honor Award – the highest non-monetary award of the U.S. Department of Energy – for work on the Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill Flow Rate Technical Group. He is on the editorial board of three scientific journals, an Associate Editor of four scientific journals, and a reviewer for 26 scientific publications.

Ding Zhu : Using Downhole Fiber Optic Temperature Sensing Technology to Monitor, Control and Improve Well Performance
Abstract Downhole sensing technology today provide engineers continuous measurements for flow condition diagnosis. The measurements include temperature, pressure, acoustic, and strain, with distributed temperature sensors (DTS) and distributed acoustic sensors (DAS) being more commonly used compared with other measurements. Since the optical fiber technology introduced to the industry, it has advanced dramatically. Many field applications have been proven effective and beneficial. From downhole flow condition characterization, we can diagnose flow problems, monitor, control, and optimize producing and injecting well performance, monitor well stimulation, both matrix acidizing and hydraulic fracturing, and optimize treatment designs. There are rich field application examples to show the potential of the technology. One of the keys of applying downhole sensing technology is to develop models and methodologies to interpret the senor measurements. This is challenging, because from data collection and processing, to model development, to invert the measured parameters to flow profiles, it is extremely mathematical and computationally intensive. In this lecture, we will review current status of downhole sensing technology, explain the available models and approaches for interpretation, and present field application examples including production profiling, horizontal well flow control, matrix acidizing optimization and multi-stage hydraulic fracture diagnosis. The lecture is based on publications by the author and other SPE publications. The lecture illustrates the power of DTS as a tool for production problem diagnosis and well performance optimization Speaker's Bio Ding Zhu is a Professor at Petroleum Engineering Department at Texas A&M University. She Holds a BS degree in mechanical engineering from the University of Science and Technology, Beijing, China, a MS and PhD degree in Petroleum Engineering, both from the University of Texas at Austin. Her research areas are production engineering, well stimulation, intelligent well modeling and complex well-performance optimization. Dr. Zhu is an author of more than 150 technical papers, a co-author of text book , Petroleum Production Systems (2nd edition), and a co-author of a SPE book, Multilateral Wells. She has been a committee member and chairperson for many conferences and events with Society of Petroleum Engineers, and is currently an associate editor for SPE Production and Operation Journal. She is a Distinguished Member of SPE.